9 October 2026

On 12 August 2026, the Kingston Society published an article entitled Hobkirk House care home refused despite officer recommendation.

The article stated that Kingston’s Planning Committee had refused application 26/00807/OUT for a new 80-bed residential care home at Hobkirk House, 109 Blagdon Road, New Malden, at its meeting on 16 July 2026.

This was entirely wrong. The Planning Committee approved the application on 16 July, and the Council issued its formal decision granting outline planning permission on 9 September 2026.

Our article also gave a seriously inaccurate account of the committee’s deliberations. In particular, it incorrectly reported that Councillor Roger Hayes had moved a motion to refuse the application. In fact, he seconded the motion for approval. Parts of the debate concerning a separate planning application heard at the same meeting were mistakenly attributed to Hobkirk House.

This error was caused by an over-reliance on a publicly available service that provides an AI-generated transcript of the meeting. The summary had confused the Hobkirk House and Middle Mill applications, reversing their decisions and misattributing parts of the debate. Our article reflected those same errors, and it was a failure on our part to rely solely on a third party account. We had attended the planing meeting but left before the Hobkirk House matter was discussed. On reflection  we should have checked the transcript against the councils own video record of the meeting. And this will be our learning point to better ensure accuracy in the future

Consequently, the article misrepresented both the committee’s discussion and its decision. We have withdrawn it in its entirety.

The Kingston Society apologises unreservedly to the applicant and developer, to members of the Planning Committee and to our readers for publishing this misleading account.

The responsibility for checking the accuracy of our reporting rests with the Society. On this occasion we failed to meet that responsibility. We are strengthening our editorial verification procedures to prevent a recurrence.

The correct decision can be confirmed on Kingston Council’s official planning register.

Kingston upon Thames Society

View application 26/00807/OUT on Kingston’s Planning Register